4000+ fine-art prints suitable for framing. Desk-size to sofa-size and larger, on archival paper or canvas.
The Shorpy Gallery
Join and Share
Social Shorpy
To love him is to like him. Our goal: 100k "likes":
Recent comments
- Lighting up was not a good idea
- Signal Hill oil fields
- Mangle, the Noun
- Drinkware from the future
- Mangle
- Prominent plumbing
- The window
- I'd love to know
- Play At Your Own Risk!
- Varies by region
- Poor boy's dream of college
- My school had a playground like that, too.
- The Swingset
- Thongs vs flip flops
- Ah yes! The Bronx.
- Was hoping someone would identify this street, but
- Boom, burn, bust
- Bleak?
- We only had two TV stations
- Talk about guts.
- EEE YAAAH
- Renumbered
- Thongs vs. Flip-Flops
- Pole lamps were big at my house.
- That Plank
- Back to the Future
- Calendar
- Not exercising was not an option
- Fruit boots
- Times Have Changed!
Member Photos
Photos submitted by Shorpy members.
Colorized Photos
Colorized photos submitted by members.
About the Photos
Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
Image Galleries
Search Shorpy
Today's Top 5
Shipshape: 1917
Submitted by Dave on Sun, 06/22/2008 - 5:53am.
New York, 1917. "Washday on landship Recruit." Sailors doing their laundry on the Navy's pretend battleship moored at Union Square, used for recruiting during World War I. In back is the Automatic Vaudeville penny arcade, two of whose backers -- Marcus Loew and Adolph Zukor -- went on to found Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Paramount Pictures after a few years in the nickelodeon business. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.
Night Ship
Submitted by RV Droz on Mon, 06/23/2008 - 2:01pm.
Those ground lights around the USS Recruit must have made for a pretty spectacular sight in the evenings. At that angle, the ground would disappear in shadows, leaving the ship to appear to float on waves of light. Very impressive design.
Union Square Again
Submitted by Mr Mel on Sun, 06/22/2008 - 11:08am.
This is Union Square Park facing south toward 14th Street (also known as Union Square South), a major crosstown (east-west) thoroughfare. The Automatic Vaudeville Theatre, if that was the name of it, was once the site of the Hearn's Department Store. The present tenant at that approximate location is a very busy Whole Foods Market at No. 4 Union Square South. No. 40 houses a Filene's Basement store -- which I believe is, ironically, on the second floor.
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
RSS | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Photo Use | © 2013 Shorpy Inc.
Today's Top 5